Building Sanctuary: The Movement to Support Vietnam War Resisters in Canada, 1965–1973 by Jessica Squires (review)

A persistent myth shrouds the way Canadians understand their country’s role in providing sanctuary to Americans fleeing service in Vietnam, Jessica Squires insists at the outset of her superb Building Sanctuary. Canadians tend to believe, she asserts, that their country naturally and unproblematically welcomed American draft dodgers and deserters during the Vietnam War. Providing a safe haven, that is, simply flowed from Canada’s long-standing role as a peace-minded society open to those fleeing injustice and militarism elsewhere.

In fact, argues Squires, Canada’s provision of sanctuary to some 40,000 American war resisters was the work of a dedicated, widespread, and little-understood social movement that had no easy path to success. Among the obstacles it faced were ambivalent government officials, ordinary Canadians who prioritized close US-Canadian relations, and especially the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which feared disruptions by radicals and closely monitored anti-draft organizations. If Canada ultimately lived up at least partially to its reputation as a refuge, Squires insists, it was a “hard fought and bitterly defended refuge.”

Drawing on extensive archival research and interviews with former Canadian activists and American war resisters, Squires begins by providing brief overviews of numerous anti-draft organizations that sprang up throughout Canada as the war in Vietnam intensified in the mid-1960s. Although the groups remained decentralized and frequently squabbled over tactics, Squires shows that they made up a single movement, with substantial communication among local organizations, by the end of the decade. Squires also demonstrates the transnational character of the movement, which forged close relations with American Quakers and groups such as Students for a Democratic Society and the War Resisters League.

The second half of the book moves from relatively static description of the moment to analysis of the key turning points in its development. Above all, Squires examines the government’s decision in May 1969 to throw Canadian borders open to American deserters, a move that resolved ambiguities in Canadian policy and marked a major victory for the war-resistance movement. Squires credits the movement with playing a key role in bringing about the decision through intensive lobbying, letter-writing, and publicity. By insisting that barring deserters from crossing the border amounted to Canadian enforcement of US law, activists played successfully on rising left nationalist sentiment fuelled by eagerness to preserve a distinct Canadian identity.

In perhaps the most incisive passages of the book, Squires notes that the debate over treatment of deserters pitted such “left nationalism” against an alternative Canadian nationalism emphasizing the principle of loyalty to one’s nation and concern about the influence of American deserters on Canadian society. Missing from the debate, she contends, was much effort to move beyond competing nationalisms and focus on the experiences and needs of American deserters, who were far more likely to lack education and job skills than the generally more affluent draft dodgers.

Squires, an independent scholar and political activist, writes with particular zeal and eloquence in this section, which most persuasively delivers on her promise to dissect Canadian identity. Unfortunately, she does not achieve the same level of elegance elsewhere. Above all, the introduction is overburdened with dense – and arguably unnecessary – discussion of Gramscian theory. Thereafter, much of Building Sanctuary suffers from a heavy prose style that obscures the drama of the stories at the heart of anti-war movement on either side of the border. Squires misses an opportunity to bring her cast of characters more fully to life and lay bare the passions and confrontations of the Vietnam era.

Still, Building Sanctuary is undeniably a tremendous accomplishment that merits the careful attention of scholars in multiple fields. For historians of Canada, the book offers an unprecedentedly thorough narrative of the war-resistance movement and a useful corrective to breezy generalizations about the nation’s identity. Scholars of social movements may be especially drawn to Squires’s analysis...